


To Make a House a Home

by dorkslayer



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Draco Malfoy-centric, Feel-good, Gen, this is all fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 16:19:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6383671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorkslayer/pseuds/dorkslayer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco Malfoy needs a home. So he makes himself one.</p><p>--------</p><p>I couldn't get the idea of Draco living in this tiny cluttered cottage in the middle of nowhere out of my head so I acted on it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Make a House a Home

**Author's Note:**

> My otp is Draco x nice things

Draco Malfoy hadn't had a home in years.

He'd had plenty of houses of course, there was a townhouse in France, a villa in Italy, and obviously the manor house in the UK. But it felt like years since he had lived in a real home. 

The Manor had felt like a true home for most of his childhood. He knew the layout of the halls and drew comfort from the texture of the floor beneath his feet. His childhood bedroom still stood in pristine condition, with its periwinkle blue walls and soaring dragons painted in green and gold swirling around his head at night. 

After his first year at Hogwarts, he had arrived home to an unfamiliar room, decked out in Slytherin green drapes and linens, and dark grey walls decorated with golden snitches floating around. This had been the room that he did most of his growing in. However, it no longer felt like it belonged to him.

The Manor had stopped feeling like home around the beginning of 6th year. When the Dark Lord took over, his safe place had become a death trap. Draco doesn't like to think about those days. Doesn't like to remember all of the innocent people who lost their lives in his spotless sitting rooms. Doesn't know how his parents can stand to live there.

It surprises almost no one when, a year after the defeat of you-know-who, he leaves. 

Now, staring at the tiny beat up cottage in the middle of rural nowhere with the sun beating down on him, Draco feels a tug in his heart and a long dormant voice whisper that this is it. This is the place. 

The house is cheap by his standards, and probably by anyone else's, and the little witch who sells it to him is happy to get such a burden off her hands. So he moves in on an evening at the end of May, carrying nothing but a small suitcase of shrunken clothes and linens. 

The night is humid and the days past have been stifling. He spends the first night lying wide awake on his cool bed with all his windows open, what little breeze there is keeping the room cool. He lies there until the wee hours of the morning and the sun is warming the horizon, questioning his life choices and second guessing everything he had ever known.

When morning comes, he sets to work. He uses magic to clear away years of dust and grime from the walls and floors and makes a mental note to rid the wall of the hideous orange color that it had been previously. He vanishes old unused furniture with a flick of his wrist until he's left with barely a shell.

Well, he thinks, at least it's a clean shell.

The house itself is a bit of a fixer upper. It requires maintenance to straighten most of the shutters so he fixes those as well and clears the front lawn of debris before setting out to begin constructing the wards.

Draco collapses in to bed that night physically and magically drained. The first day passes quicker than expected.

The second day goes less so. He's awoken too early by a couple of sharp raps on his door, which he stumbled to warily, wand at the ready. He opens the door to a familiar face that he hasn't seen in months. 

"Bit of a dump isn't it?" Blaise grumbles unhappily, shielding his eyes from the sun. "But whatever makes you happy I suppose." Draco smiles his first real smile in a long time. 

He and Blaise end up spending the day working on the interior of the house. Well, Blaise does most of the work, picking paint samples of light blues and greens and applying the right charms. Draco was kicked out of his own living room the moment he mentioned the color yellow. 

Draco spends the rest or that day using charms to fix and weatherproof the house. He clears away the remains of a few mangled garden beds and silently reminds himself to ask his mother for tips on what to plant. Gardening had been one of her favorite pastimes for as long as he could remember.

The next month passes in a similar fashion, with Blaise coming by often, the repairs go quicker. By the time summer has hit its full throttle, Draco has fixed up the old tool shed in the back, added jumbled furniture to most of the rooms, and found himself a job.

The job is good, he apprentices with an elderly man in a potions shop on Diagon Alley, but it throws everything at his house into disarray. Not much work gets done until he's able to find a steady balance between work and home life. October is halfway gone before something interesting happens again.

Draco is mostly used to visitors by now, Blaise and his mother stop by often enough that he no longer is hyper-vigilant about taking his wand to answer the door, however the face that greets him today is one he wasn't expecting.

"I can't believe you didn't invite me to the housewarming party." Pansy snaps shrilly as she storms past him. "I had to find out from Blaise of all people." 

The whole encounter takes him a moment to register, and by the time he's ready to retort that he would have invited her to a housewarming party is there had been one, Pansy has already made her way into the kitchen and is fixing herself a cup of tea, like she's lived here forever.

Pansy looks around the house at its empty cool colored walls and nags at Draco to add some personal touches. He decides to trust her womanly instinct, mostly because she's scary when she's mad, and he quite frankly agrees (also because the only portrait in the house is Severus's and he isn't always the best company).

Over the next few months, Draco collects a gaggle of accent prices and possibly more lamps than any one human could ever need. By the time January rolls out, his house is starting to resemble a home.

There are colorful cups of quills mixed with muggle pens scattered throughout the house and a collection of cracked mugs taking up most of the counter space in his kitchen. Books litter the many antique end tables and overflow from their shelves. There are odd collections of decorative plates and potted plants adorning the tops of said shelves. Photos and portraits clutter the walls with good memories. And, somehow, he's gotten a garden planted and kept it alive. His front lawn has beds of mixed wild flowers and two garden flamingos that habitually snap at his robes and nip his ankles. 

By the time the one year mark rolls around, it's no longer a house, it's a home. 

Draco is sitting in one of the mismatched cushy yellow armchairs in the living room while reading and sipping a coffee, when he lifts his head and looks at the life he's built for himself and smiles. 

It hasn't been easy, but it's peaceful and calm now. He's proud of himself for getting this far, for building something from nothing. He takes a deep breath and prays that it stays tranquil for just a little while longer.

But of course, it doesn't. And of course, it's all Harry Potters fault when things go sideways.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! As alway please point out any mistakes I've made and criticism is always welcome! 
> 
> I'm planning on turning this into a series that involves drarry, so stick around for that!
> 
> Come check me out on tumblr at trashy-chicken.


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